Richard Widmark returns to the series in an E. Jack Neuman script about a gambler whose life is falling apart. The only way he might stop gambling is if he ends up a broken man and loses more than his savings. This inveterate gambler who clings to the belief that all he has to do to become wealthy is to find the right card game. His pregnant wife is weary of his broken promises to reform and get a respectable job. She has decided to leave him. Desperate now, he has a plan to find that one card game he’s been looking for. He has to look the part of a big gambler to have a chance at getting into one of those no-limit games, and he has to look like he has big money so he can get into the game on credit. He goes to a store he’s been to before, but not in a while, and gets a $300 suit ($3500 in US$2024) on a promise to pay later. The owner is skeptical because he’s always paid cash. He convinces that very store owner to let him borrow his plush $10,000 car ($120,000 in US$2024), to put up a flashy front. He succeeds and gets himself invited to sit in on that no-limit poker game. The ruse worked so well, they gave him credit to play the game without putting up his own cash. Now all he has to do is win.
There does not seem like there’s a lot of suspense in the story, but it all comes at the end (spoiler) when he loses big, really big, and has to admit he has no money. This does not go over well, and they take him for “a ride.” He’s left in a ditch, and he’s beaten up so badly no one who sees him helps him. He realizes he’s put the lives of his wife, his newborn child, and his own, in jeopardy. Perhaps now that it has shifted from certain financial harm to potential physical harm, something in his thinking may finally click. Maybe the suspense is whether or not this is finally the life-changing tragedy of his own doing that finally gets him to stop gambling and keep his many promises.
Widmark is good, yet again, in this different role and a very different story. It is definitely not a Suspense classic, but it is an intriguing episode, nonetheless. If someone is new to classic radio or Suspense, this is not one that you suggest as one of their first listens.
The dramatic portion of the program was rehearsed and recorded on Sunday, April 11, 1954. Rehearsal began at 11:00am and recording started at 3:30pm, concluding at 4:00pm.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP540419
THE CAST
RICHARD WIDMARK (Chick Regan), Clayton Post (Harry / Max), Cathy Lewis (Jenny), Jay Novello (Jim Santo), Hy Averback (Walshie), Eddy Fields (Phil Archer), Lou Krugman (Lew Humboldt), Joe Granby (Larry), Larry Thor (Narrator) [Joe Kearns was originally cast for Walsh & a character named Charlie, but for whatever reason he wasn’t in the show]
COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Bob Emerick (on-the-spot interviewer)
###
